Armenia's prime minister said the CSTO, seen as Putin's NATO, "creates threats" for his country's future existence, after it pulled away from it.

On Wednesday, the Kremlin condemned comments by outgoing NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg as “dangerous”, Reuters reports. Stoltenberg had suggested that allowing Ukraine to use Western long-range missiles to strike Russian territory would not trigger an escalation from Moscow.

The Russian president earlier this year rebuffed Defense Ministry officials who had tried to convince him they needed more soldiers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the country’s military to increase its number of troops by 180,000, the third time he has expanded its ranks since launching his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Such an increase would see Russia leapfrog the United States and India in terms of the number of active combat soldiers it has at its disposal.